This invention relates to apparatus for commercial production, assembling, and packaging of lasagna strips.
The invention to which the present application is directed relates particularly to the collator section in which cut strips of lasagna are collated for final packaging.
Apparatus has been available in the prior art for commercial production of lasagna strips but the collating or stacking of the strips for final packaging has heretofore been performed mannually.
In the commercial production of lasagne, a flour-and-water mix is extruded through dies to form continuous strips of pasta approximately two inches wide. The pasta strips are cut into lengths of approximately four feet and hung over horizontally-disposed rods known as stick feeders. A number of strips, for example, twenty-four strips, are hung or suspended over a single stick feeder, with each of the U-shaped strips having legs of about equal length, i.e. about two-feet long. The stick feeders, of which there are many, are moved in succession at a slow rate along a serpentine path through a long dryer. The time of passage through a dryer may be of the order of forty-eight hours. At the exit end of the dryer, each stick feeder is successively lowered through a forwardly-projecting arcuate path and the group of twenty-four suspended strips of lasagna are laid as a group horizontally across a transverse conveyor. The stick feeder is withdrawn horizontally through the open end of the U-shaped strips, and the strips of lasagna are transported forwardly toward a pair of spaced-apart disc cutters. One disc cutter successively severs the closed end of the U-shaped strips, while at the same time the other successively severs the strips at their mid-point. As a result, each of the U-shaped lasagna strips is converted into two sets of two-layer lasagna strips positioned side-by-side on the conveyor. As the conveyor moves on, the sets are cammed apart by a camming separator. In the prior art mechanism, the conveyor then transports the spaced-apart sets of two-layer lasagna strips toward a manual station where operators collect and stack the strips for packaging.